Review: Speed Dating the Boss by Sue Brown

Title: Speed Dating the Boss

Series: Cowboys and Angels: Book One

Author: Sue Brown

Length: 204 Pages

Category: Contemporary

At a Glance: Despite some glitches in the plot, the sweet romance and flirtatious banter between Gideon and Dan was a solid win for me.

Reviewed By: Sammy

Blurb: Will a mix of privilege and blue collar be a recipe for love… or disaster?

Dan’s pretty satisfied with his job at the working-class bar Cowboys and Angels. He enjoys his simple life, his apartment, and his cat, but he could do without the fights that break out in the bar, his boss’s meddling daughter, Ariel… oh, and a brutal, unrequited crush on his straight alpha boss, Gideon.

When Dan’s friend prepares to tie the knot, everyone insists that Dan needs a date for the wedding. Before he can protest, Ariel arranges a gay speed-dating event at the bar with Gideon as a participant. The unforeseen revelation that Gideon is bisexual raises Dan’s hopes, especially when Gideon announces that he wants to accompany Dan to the wedding. Could Gideon really be interested in Dan?

When Dan needs someone most, Gideon offers his unconditional support, and with genuine commitment, he shows Dan the kind of man he really is. Teaming up to save the wedding from a hungover groom and intolerant parents, can Gideon convince Dan they’re the best match since beer and pizza?

Review: Dan’s life, up to now, has been one of meager finances, hard work and little time for anything else. And don’t even mention romance. While he barely made it through high school, pursuing his degree in order to one day have his own bar has been a goal for Dan for some time. Working at Cowboys and Angels has given him the financial means to pursue getting his degree and, hopefully, move on to something bigger and better than being just a bartender. He likes his job but between the boss’s daughter causing fights with her constant flirting and brattiness, and his unrequited crush on his very straight boss, things are not always easy for poor Dan.

When Dan’s dearest friend asks him to be his best man for his upcoming wedding, Dan is coerced into finding a plus-one as his date. The same man who Dan lusts after decides, along with his daughter, to set up a speed dating event at the bar so that Dan can find a suitable candidate. Little does he know that the boss, Gideon, has decided all along that he will be Dan’s date, and that Gideon is not the so very straight man Dan has always thought him to be. Now, all that remains to be seen is if these two men from such different backgrounds can really become a team.

With the start of a new series entitled Cowboys and Angels, author Sue Brown released the first novel, Speed Dating the Boss. There were several interesting facets to the main character in this novel that made it stand out. I really enjoyed the fact that Dan was a no-nonsense kind of guy who wasn’t overly concerned with his appearance, could hold his own in a bar that serviced predominantly blue collar, straight guys, and wasn’t afraid to speak his mind to the boss, who he happened to be crushing on. While I really wish the author had decided to give us a bit more back story on Dan’s relationship with his mother, which was alluded to on more than one occasion, I still felt that I knew this character so well by the end of the novel, and I liked what I knew of him.

Gideon, on the other hand, didn’t seem quite as real a person to me, nor did I get a good sense of who he was even though the author gave us pertinent info on his past—the most important being that he had been married and widowed and had loved deeply. His indulgent attitude toward his daughter, who acted well below the stated age of twenty-one, was a bit annoying to me. However, I appreciated how Gideon finally took a much needed stand when she made the selfish and petty mistakes she did that ended up in Dan being physically harmed.

As far as Gideon revealing that there was more to his sexuality than met the eye, it seemed a bit contrived to me and made me wonder why he’d kept it such a secret. Perhaps the hardest tidbit for me to swallow, though, was Gideon’s age. Apparently he was merely thirty-seven, which meant that he and his wife had their daughter when he was only sixteen. I got that they were high school sweethearts, but most sixteen-year-olds in the U.S. are two years away from graduating. That’s awfully young to be getting married, so I struggled with the idea that this teenager married, raised a family, inherited heaps of money, and was now a successful business magnate—just a bit too much to take in, if I’m to be honest.

Despite those glitches in the plot, the sweet romance and flirtatious banter between Gideon and Dan was a solid win for me. I found myself smiling more than once at their interactions, and that saved this novel when the premise it was based on became a bit far-fetched.

You can buy Speed Dating the Boss here:
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